Abstract
This book is an important contribution to recent debates on the costs and consequences of mass incarceration in the United States. It combines the expertise of authors who have spent their careers traversing boundaries between the ivory tower of academia and the corrections and social work industries. The book is both theoretical and practical, combining a data-driven search for explanation with accumulated personal insights, and proposes policy changes that are as reasonable as they are substantive.
In plain prose, Looman and Carl place crime and incarceration rates in the US in comparative perspective. A series of spare tables present the data in a non-technical manner and reveal that the US prison population overshadows those of heavily populated developing countries such as China, India, and Brazil. If one looks only at wealthy industrialized countries, it becomes apparent that countries with similar overall crimes rates have significantly lower incarceration rates. Thus, the common perception that the “‘US must incarcerate more people because there are more criminals’ is not supported by the data” (xv). In fact, the rate of drug offenses in the US (560 per 100,000 people) is far more than the rate of homicides (5 per 100,000 people). Of more than 2.3 million individuals imprisoned by 2008, almost 80% had committed petty or moderate crimes. Looman and Carl do not dispute that violent offenders—less than 20% of prisoners—should be incarcerated. But they find problematic that the high rate of incarceration has to do with jailing non-violent drug offenders en masse. They question the wisdom of imprisoning people the majority of whom committed no more than petty crimes such as theft or public drunkenness. In the authors’ cumulative experience, these individuals are more frightened and confused by the rules of mainstream society than they are frightening or inherently violent (13, 55).
The distinctive argument here is that non-violent drug offenses should be framed not as an issue of public security or crime control, but as one pertaining to mental health. The authors humanize the inmates, delving into the causes of their underlying disorders. Looman and Carl argue that drug offenders have never learnt basic functional and coping skills. The authors delve into social psychological theory to interpret their own observations and show that mental and cognitive disability is typically traced to systematic neglect, ineffective parenting, and physical and mental abuse during early childhood years. Such individuals are plagued by a sense of unworthiness, suffer from traumatic stress and depressive disorders, and have cognitive deficits that make it difficult to learn from previous experience. On display is “learned helplessness”—a tendency to believe they will fail, and indeed they do fail at the basic tasks that “sustain their own lives” such as managing time, setting goals, and making simple plans to achieve those (62, 70–71, 153). In fact, the rate for offender suicide is about three times that of the general population; the incidence of mental illness four times that of the general population (63, 73). So, rather than assume that offenders lack the will to change, one must reckon with the “numerous and unintended” obstacles they face while trying to reintegrate with mainstream society. The authors recount behaviors they consider typical of former prisoners. A sincere intention to attend a parole hearing can be undermined because they did not plan for gas money or bus fare; they may not show up for a job interview because of shame in asking money for a haircut or clean clothes. Many lack a birth certificate or driver’s license—basic documents necessary to restart life. They may fall back on drugs or alcohol to cope with the stigma they encountered when looking for a job or housing with a felony record. According to the authors, former prisoners need significant support “to stay with the processes that ha[ve] to be gone through in order to obtain documents, appointments, and possessions”—otherwise they are doomed to fail (75, 145, 194–195). About 59% of released prisoners are estimated to return to prison within three years (2010 figures). The recidivism rate—half a million offenders annually—has been mostly static for three decades (13, 131).
Looman and Carl deploy a creative metaphor to convey the essence of the problem: incarceration for non-violent drug offenders has created a “country called prison” whose boundaries extend beyond prison walls. This “country” is able to maintain its population by means of securing routine intakes from areas disproportionately populated by disadvantaged minority groups (inner city neighborhoods, for instance), whose members are then “prisonized,” that is, intimately socialized into the culture of violence, mistrust, deprivation, and manipulation while in prison. The rules of life in mainstream society are foreign to them as if they were immigrants from another country altogether; recidivism and the inter-generational cycle continues tying them and their children to this “country” (prison) for decades to come. The authors cite research showing that children with parents who have been to prison stand a 25% greater chance of ending up in prison than children whose parents were never imprisoned (75, 90, 194).
Locking “them” away is not without consequences for the rest of America. Prison maintenance costs taxpayers more than $50 billion each year. Budget increases on this front outpace provisions for transportation, education, etc. (5, 14). One of every 48 working-age adults is in prison, a fact that denies potential tax-contributors to the public coffers. New burdens on government services are placed in the form of more foster care centers, youth agencies, etc., as children are left to fend for themselves in the community (9, 13).
The authors point to the folly of misunderstanding the nature and causes of the criminal activities we aim to control, and of proceeding as if mass incarceration were something to do with “them” and not “us.” They propose the cost of prison maintenance be transferred from states to local communities so that counties take direct responsibility for those they send to prison and can debate for themselves what kind of corrections system they want (165). They also propose the use of a specific billing code whenever social services are sought because a family member is in prison. This can help calculate the variety of piecemeal collateral costs of incarceration (168). An important idea is to work on offenders’ psychosocial development—best accomplished through diversionary programs using public health and social work approaches. Relatedly, District Attorney Offices could be incentivized to use such diversionary programs, so that effective crime control work is not interpreted as sending people to prison, but is understood in terms of treatment and employment, making tax-contributors of formerly tax-users (164).
Overall, this book is scholarly, accessible, and timely. Its approach is humane, evidence-based, and argumentative. The ideas and proposals here deserve to be widely circulated in academic circles, policy networks, and among a mass general audience.